[ On Friday, April 18, 2003 at 08:07:05 (+0200), Wojciech Puchar wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: buying more NetBSD hardware
>
> most cases i see 64-bit architecture just as needing much more memory
> bandwidth.
Actually, no, they don't need more memory "bandwidth". In fact some
64-bit machines already have more memory bandwidth by default since they
can access multi-word chunks at a time (as can a lot of semi-modern
32-bit machines, but that just means 64-bit machines are still double
the 32-bit machines in bandwidth, all other things such as latency
remaining the same which normally is the case :-).
(64-bit architectures might need more total memory _capacity_, depending
on the specific CPU and even the language and compiler implementation,
and sometimes that added capacity requirement makes you wish your memory
was faster, but that added speed can be had without increasing the
bandwidth by just lowering the access latency.)
> PS. will be very happy to be able to buy non-intel architecture machine
> with reasonable price.
PS: You can buy used SPARCstation 5, 10, or even 20 machines with
decent enough CPUs and memory now for very reasonable prices. Last year
I bought two SS5s and two SS20s, all fully loaded with memory and disk
(only one CPU in the SS20s), for a mere $400[usa] total. I personally
will never use yet another PC for a server or router ever again
(i.e. over and above the few I use now to support my customers), at
least not until PCs have full and true OpenFirmware support.
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098; <g.a.woods@ieee.org>; <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; VE3TCP; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>